Nvidia, SB Energy Plan 10-GW AI Campus in Pike County, Ohio
A stranded federal industrial site becomes the collateral for a $105 billion guarantee, and a preview of how site selection works when power is the asset.
Nvidia is guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease and power payments to back an 8-gigawatt AI computing campus that SB Energy plans to build in Pike County, Ohio, on the site of a decommissioned federal uranium enrichment plant, the companies announced August 17. OpenAI is the anchor tenant under a 20-year lease, and Nvidia is separately investing $1.5 billion in SB Energy as it locks up land, power and shell capacity at the site, Engineering News-Record reported.
Why it matters
This is one of the largest single blocks of committed data center power anywhere, and it is landing on ground the market had written off. The former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant spans private and federal acreage that sat idle for years after the Department of Energy shut down enrichment operations there. SB Energy’s buildout, developed alongside AEP Ohio, the DOE and the Commerce Department, is a working template for the site-selection math every developer chasing data center adjacency is now running: pair distressed industrial or federal land with an already-interconnected transmission corridor, and the power becomes the asset, not the building. For national market developers eyeing land near hyperscale campuses, Pike County’s jump from stranded federal site to $105 billion anchor tenant is a signal of how fast rural land near heavy transmission infrastructure can reprice once one deal locks it in.
The numbers
SB Energy and SoftBank plan to build at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation, supporting 8 IT-gigawatts of AI factory capacity, with an initial 4.25 IT-GW phase and an option for 3.75 IT-GW more. Nvidia is investing $1.5 billion directly in SB Energy and guaranteeing up to $105 billion in lease and power payment obligations. SB Energy and SoftBank are separately committing at least $4.2 billion to regional grid infrastructure through a partnership with AEP Ohio. Capacity comes online in phases starting in 2028.
What’s next
AEP Ohio’s grid buildout and the phased 2028 interconnection timeline are the near-term markers to track, along with whether the $80 million community benefits fund, plus OpenAI’s added $40 million, becomes the negotiating floor other Ohio counties point to on the next hyperscale deal that comes looking for land and transmission capacity.
On the record
What we checked ourselves, and where you can check it too.
- Public recordThe campus sits on the decommissioned Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a federal uranium enrichment site in Pike County that spans both private and federal acreage and had sat idle since the Department of Energy shut down enrichment there, a site-history detail Nvidia's own announcement carries that the chip-industry wire coverage does not foreground.View the record on nvidianews.nvidia.com
Sources
- ENRNVIDIA Partners With SB Energy on 10-GW AI Data Center Complex in Ohio
- NVIDIA Newsroom (press release)NVIDIA Guarantees SB Energy's PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Ohio to Exclusively Host NVIDIA AI Compute
- Reuters via Yahoo FinanceNvidia to provide up to $105 billion guarantee for OpenAI's Ohio data center